


with these things, there’s no telling

by badritual



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Finn/Rey Force Bond, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Love Confessions, Not Beta Read, POV Finn (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, References to Kylo Ren, References to Rey & Kylo Ren's Force Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 01:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21988945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badritual/pseuds/badritual
Summary: Where do they go from here?
Relationships: Finn/Rey (Star Wars)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 112
Collections: Finnrey Fanfic Connection





	with these things, there’s no telling

**Author's Note:**

> Set during that implied brief period of time after the Final Battle(s) but before Rey jets off to Tatooine.
> 
>  **Additional Warning:** This is a Finn/Rey fic but there are brief references to the relationship between Rey and Kylo Ren. If you find references to Rey's relationship with Kylo Ren upsetting, do not read any further.
> 
> Title from "First Day of My Life," by Bright Eyes.

After the celebrations have died down with the last embers of the bonfire Poe had built for the three of them, Finn goes off in search of Rey. 

She’s been quiet and contemplative since she returned from Exegol. And Finn can sense a wound in her soul when he reaches out through the Force. 

He finds her in the cave she’d turned into a temporary home, folding up her bedroll and stuffing it into a bag. He leans in the doorway and watches as she tosses some random trinkets in alongside it: a datapad, a book, a necklace of wooden beads similar to the one Kylo Ren had stolen from her on Pasaana. 

She grabs the lightsabers—Master Luke’s and General Leia’s—and clips them to her belt. 

Then she sits back on her heels.

“Finn,” she says, getting to her feet and turning to greet him, a smile alighting on her face. 

Finn’s arms slip around her easily. He’d wanted to play it cool, be aloof until he could get a sense of the mood she was in, but the moment she turns that smile of hers onto him he can’t help but reach out for her.

During the flight back to Ajan Kloss, Finn had had some time to think. He knew something had happened on Exegol between Rey and Kylo Ren, though he wasn’t sure exactly what (and wasn’t sure he really wanted the answer). He’d become even more certain of it when she touched down and clambered out of Skywalker’s X-wing, her eyes distant and her smile faint, haunted. Her energy was frantic, frazzled, the threads of their bond frayed and trembling. 

When he pulled Rey and Poe into a hug, he’d felt her press her face into his neck and breathe shakily against him. Finn held onto both of them like his life depended on it, only letting go when the music and revelry started unfolding around them. 

Now, he holds Rey at arm’s length and looks deeply into her eyes. 

“I’ve got something I need to tell you,” he says, soberly. 

Rey’s forehead creases and she touches his chest lightly, fingers dancing over the lapel of his vest. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Great, really,” Finn says, flashing her a smile he’s not really feeling at the moment. This is a serious talk about a serious subject. Smiling feels vaguely inappropriate. 

Rey tilts her head. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, no. I’m sure. Rey, you remember the sinking sands? I was gonna tell you something,” he says, and he may be rambling and stalling now. 

She nods. “I do.”

“I—I’m—” Finn falters and he lets his hands slip from her shoulders. “I’m–”

He’d had this grand speech planned. He was going to tell her about his Feeling—even back during his Stormtrooper days, he’d always had this sense that he was meant for something more. It had begun as a tiny flame in his chest that flared to life when Slip died and he met Poe on the _Finalizer_. And when he met Rey on Jakku, it had burst into a five-alarm conflagration. 

But how do you take all those feelings—all that Feeling—and distill them down? “I’m like you, I have the Force,” feels almost anti-climactic. 

He wishes he could just show her, maybe resurrect that dying bonfire and let the flames tell his story.

Finn reaches out for her again, grasping for her hand, before he realizes he isn’t reaching with his hands but with his Feeling. The Force, he supposes. 

Rey’s fingers curl around his own. And her Feeling wraps itself around Finn’s, entwining around his energy like spools of ribbon. 

“I know,” she says, her tone soft and fond. 

“How long,” Finn asks, squeezing gently.

“I wasn’t sure, at first,” she says, resting her cheek against his shoulder. “All living things have at least a touch of the Force. But when you found me on the Starkiller, I thought…maybe. But everything happened so fast, other things took my attention. I didn’t feel it again until I found you on Crait. I was pretty sure by then.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Finn asks, lacing their fingers together.

Rey huffs softly against his shoulder. “It was yours to tell, Finn,” she says, tracing the fingers of her unoccupied hand over Finn’s knuckles. “I was willing to wait for you. I always was.”

Finn’s mind touches briefly on Kylo Ren— _Ben Solo_ , a faint voice whispers at the back of his mind—and he sighs against her hair. 

“And now?” he asks.

 _What now_ , he wants to add but doesn’t. _What happens to us now?_

 _Do you love him?_ he doesn’t ask. 

_Do you love **me**?_

But it’s not important. Not when they have a Republic to rebuild. And ghosts to bury. 

He gives her hand a gentle squeeze before letting go. 

Rey looks up at him, that smile still curling the corners of her mouth upward. “Finn,” she says, reaching out, cupping her palm against his cheek. “I’ve always loved you.”

Finn’s heart stutters in his chest, seeming to stop before roaring back to life. “But—I thought—” Words escape him, and all he can do is splutter before he curls his hand over hers to bring it down so that he can hold onto it. “I felt you die. I felt other things too. Feelings.”

Rey’s eyes grow distant again, just for a moment, before she refocuses on Finn. “I’m still figuring it out,” she says, with a soft sigh. “I felt a connection to him, but… I still don’t know how much of it was real and how much of it was planted there by my grandfather. It died with him on Exegol, but there’s still so much left for me to sort out.”

 _Her grandfather_. There’s still so much he doesn’t understand. He wonders if he ever will be able to. She’s a Palpatine. Kylo Ren had died as Ben Solo. She and Kylo—Ben—had been psychically linked. And now he’s dead.

Where do they go from here? 

“I want to help you figure it out, if you’d like,” Finn says. “If you need time on your own, I get it. Believe me, I do.”

“I spent most of my life on my own,” she says, tightening her hands around Finn’s. “I don’t ever want to be apart from you again. If you’ll still have me.”

Finn can sense the tumult warring within her. He can feel her fear, her worry—worry that he thinks less of her now, that he might change his mind about her. That he might not be able to trust her anymore, knowing who she comes from. 

That he might not be able to forgive her for her complicated feelings toward Kylo Ren. Ben.

But when Finn looks at her, he doesn’t see the ghost of her grandfather or even Kylo. When he reaches out through the ribbons of Feeling tying him to Rey, he doesn’t sense the bond she’d shared with Kylo. Ben. Their bond died with him on Exegol. It’s been reunited with the Force, the long-delayed healing of an old wound.

He sees Rey. He’s only ever seen Rey. 

Finn still isn’t sure what he thinks about all of this—empires, cults, legacies, Force bonds, their trauma, his own abilities, Rey’s murky feelings—but he does know that he wants her in his life. Even if they never advance beyond friends, what’s so bad about that? 

Finn glances down at their interlocked hands. He’d started this journey without anyone he could call a friend and now he has a family. No one can take that away from him.

“I think I’d like that,” he says, glancing at Rey, feeling his mouth pull into a grin.

She smiles back, as brilliant and bright as the twin suns of Tatooine.


End file.
